An examination of how intergenerational altruism and borrowing constraints shape the interest rate, savings, and welfare response to funded and unfunded Social Security programs.

An analysis of the interest rate and savings effects of fiscal policy in an overlapping generations framework, discussing the circumstances under which capital's steady-state marginal product varies.

We review evidence on the Great Moderation in conjunction with evidence about volatility trends at the micro level. We combine the two types of evidence to develop a tentative story for important components of the aggregate volatility decline and its consequences. The key ingredients of the...

Unemployment inflows fell from 4 percent of employment per month in the early 1980s to 2 percent or less by the mid 1990s and thereafter. U.S. data also show a secular decline in firm-level employment volatility and the job destruction rate. We interpret this decline as a decrease in the...

The U.S. economy hit bottom in June 2009. Thirty months later, output growth remains sluggish and unemployment still hovers above 8%. A critical question is why. One view attributes the weak recovery, at least in part, to high levels of uncertainty about economic policy. This view entails two...

Many theoretical models of labor market search imply a tight link between worker flows (hires and separations), vacancies, and job flows (employer-level employment growth) at the employer level. Using establishment data from multiple sources for the U.S., we show that hiring, quit, layoff, and...